Really? Invincible's presence at anchor off Stanley on July 1st with a fresh coat of paint is one of the pieces of "evidence" quoted in favour of this story.

It's 25 years since these events. In that time not one of several hundred crew members of Invincible, several hundred crew members of nearby ships, several hundred people in chain of command, comms and HQ positions, several thousand dockyard workers, or the tens of thousands of these peoples' families have ever said one word to support the story. If it's a conspiracy it's a remarkably effective one.

You can't have thousands of sailors aware of something like that and not have it become public eventually. The British revealed damage to their ships soon after it happened. There was really no way to hide it.

You can't possibly repair a ship at sea which has been hit by a weapon of any significance.

It's mentioned on the internet in one or two conspiracy theory discussions, if you Google a few key words you'll turn it up somewhere. As far as I'm concerned it's not a significant issue either way, I mentioned it to point out the contradictions in some of the arguments made in support of the idea.

After the early sucess of the French Exocet missiles, the UK SAS intercepted the main shipment of the missiles before they got to Argentina. This meant there were very few missiles available for the Argentine airforce to fire, and the British scientists quickly developed a jamming strategy. All the remaining missiles were destroyed or splashed.

Remember the UK were already using the French ship launched Exocet so they knew how they worked but not the frequencies and modulations being used in the air-launch version.

Similarly the two Argentinian Type 42's were British built, and the Argentine navy kept them well away, as they thought they would be vounerable (like the Sheffield) to ship launched Exocet.

the UK SAS intercepted the main shipment of the missiles before they got to Argentina. This meant there were very few missiles available for the Argentine airforce to fire, and the British scientists quickly developed a jamming strategy. All the remaining missiles were destroyed or splashed.

Yes, that´s right. The lot of 9 remaining missiles was not delivered during the war, but I don´t kow the date in which they had to be delivered. The embargo didn´t prevent the Aerospatiale technicians finish configuring the Exocet/Super Etendard weapon system.

It's always interesting to read conspiracy theories and no matter how outlandish you cant help feeling that maybe there might just be something in it. Well in this case I am pretty confident there is nothing in it as I was on board the Invincible during the conflict and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed an excocet in the hanger.

Here's one for you that hasen't been properly explained to me. During the conflict we were called to action stations one day and the ship manouvered violently while increasing speed dramatically, at some point we were told it was a possible torpedo attack, I remember being relieved as my action station was at the hanger level and I figured I might be better off being hit by a torpedo that an excocet. Afterwards we were told we had outrun it, to say no more about it as it would be embarrasing for an anti submarine carrier to have its "royal" submarine protective shield penetrated.

Never thought anymore of it until The Sun "newspaper" published a story about the attack (the result of a young sailor writing home) and we were told that "it never happened, it was a mistake" I remember the skipper making that pipe himself. There was some talk of the submarine manufacturers (German I think) hawking the story around as a sort of marketing tool. No more was spoken and to this day I don't know if we were attacked or not, any other ex crew remember this?